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It was him Mother’s Day, two months after Peru went into quarantine due to the pandemic. She felt that something in her was not right, despite the fact that in December 2019 she underwent a cancer screening and all the tests were negative. That Sunday morning, in a self-examination she came across a lump in one breast. “What a gift you give yourself,” her husband told her. “What if it’s something benign?” she insisted. She until now she wonders why she did it and she doesn’t find a clear answer. She tells me that it was the impulse, “she told me something”.
In September of the same year, she was officially diagnosed with high-risk breast cancer. She is one of the voices of the #MamaTeQuieroForever campaign. Cancer patient associations want to make visible the fight of mothers with cancer. According to the Global Cancer Observatory, 37,000 women are diagnosed each year with this disease in the country. They seek that the regulations of the National Cancer Law improve in aspects such as control, less bureaucracy and a larger budget.
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May 2021 arrived, the second Mother’s Day in a pandemic. And she received it with uncertainty because that month she would have an operation. She had both breasts removed, her ovary, among other procedures, in an eight-hour operation. “I thought it would be the last Mother’s Day that I would spend with my son,” Rosita Emilia García tells me 48 hours after Mother’s Day 2022. “I feel strange, I have never given interviews or told my story or that of my son”, he adds with a thin voice and a shy smile that reveals that he has overcome cancer.
-How is it going?
Better, more restored, although there are always muscle pains. I came out with a five-year treatment, I’m taking pills. I am having check-ups every three months, because the process only concluded in September 2021. But now more willing.
-How do you manage to face the bad news that you have cancer?
It was very difficult. It was very hard to break the news to my family, my mother, my husband, my son with special abilities: a syndrome associated with autistic behaviors and severe mental retardation, the first case in Peru.
-Does he know about the cancer he had?
I told my child through a story. I told him the story of a mother who was sick and who would soon recover. She told him often so that she could internalize it. And every time I went to the doctor, I emphasized that his mother was going to be cured, to get well and that she would wait for me, that she would soon arrive. She always told him where she was going.
– But he came to realize that, finally, he was talking about you?
Yes, because he never had feelings of reaching out, of hugging me. And he began to take care of me, to caress my bald head. He saw that his mother was sick and I told him that his mother was going to recover soon so that she could continue helping him at school.
-In what circumstances did you tell the story?
I told him about it in the evenings. I told him about it for a month, after I was officially diagnosed with cancer. When I had the first chemotherapies, he shocked me strongly; then, he took me by the hand and took me to eat. But I wasn’t hungry, he was going to the bathroom to dump. That’s why I decided to tell him that a mother was sick and that she was going to get well soon.
– Was he asking you something?
He just listened to me and looked at me. She concentrated when she told him the story. She told him without a book in her hand, but then I wrote it in a notebook. My husband told me: “Aren’t you afraid that he will worry?” A child like him is always aware of what is happening around him and feels the punch or the change in his mother. He is 10 years old today, but when I was diagnosed he was 8 years old.
-Is he telling you a story today?
I tell him. He really likes to travel to Lima, because from a very young age he used to take him to the hospital. And I always tell him everything he’s been through. I tell him that there was a boy who went to the hospital all his life… But at some point I felt that I couldn’t.
-What made you recover?
Much prayer, much faith. She was listening to a song that talked about everything going to be alright.
-Under what circumstances did they tell you that your son had different abilities?
When he is born. He was born with his eyes fully closed. He had microcephaly, separated eyebrows, low dilation of the ears, multiple malformations and they even told us that he would not be able to walk, and that he would be blind. He never sucked my breasts and that’s maybe why I got cancer from the mastitis that formed in me. Since he was 20 days old, I began physical and visual therapy with him. I accepted my son as he was him. And I said, “I have to get it out there.”
-The news of your son’s condition and that you had cancer have been the most difficult you have had to face?
Yes. But he has been my engine to recover and more than an engine, I would say that he is my complement. As I told the doctor: “I want to live for my son.”
-They tell me that you now help other people.
When I recovered, together with a doctor we carried out breast cancer prevention campaigns, I supported some people who came from Chimbote, they stayed at my house, and until now it is like that. I know that it is a difficult situation and that is why I offer the place, the affection, the trust and the support.
– Are you worried about the future?
I live the present, because the future is uncertain. I live with my son, my family, I try to be well and feel good. And I like to help.
-When they told you that you overcame cancer, did you go to your son and tell him the end of the story?
It was hard to believe that he was okay. And yes, I told her that her mother was fine, that she had recovered. I gave her a big hug and told her: I’m an expert at telling stories (laughs).
AUTOFICHA
– “I am Rosita Emilia García Quispe. I was born in Sullana, but I live here in Trujillo for a long time. I am 39 years old. I finished school, I studied higher technical in Computing, then I studied Psychology, but I stayed in the fifth cycle, because I got pregnant”.
– “Currently, I dedicate myself to taking care of my child, I try to continue supporting the school where he studies, which has many needs. And I continue to do breast cancer prevention talks together with a doctor, who always supports me and I am very grateful.”
– “I want to make a school for children with special abilities, where they have their workshops and what they need, such as free therapies, so that they can fulfill themselves, be good men and women according to their possibilities. I would like to make a shelter for women with breast cancer in the northern region”.
